Featured
Reparations for African Americans Is Not a Fantasy. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
Few issues in American public life provoke more skepticism than reparations for African Americans. To many, the idea seems politically impossible, financially impractical, or simply too late. Yet reparations are neither a new idea nor without precedent in American history. The question is not whether the nation has ever compensated people for historic injustice. It has. The question is whether America is willing to apply that same principle to African Americans.
Read complete essay. Reparations for African Americans Is Not a Fantasy. By Ronald J. Sheehy, Editor / On Race in America
The Week’s Top Stories
Political / Social
Trump Pops Off On ‘Black And Brown Voters’ And It Sounds Like Total BS. By Ron Dicker / HuffPost
“Black and Brown Voters don’t want Communism or Socialism — Not surprisingly, they are flocking to the Republican Party!” he wrote on Truth Social. “They remember that Abraham Lincoln was a Republican! President DONALD J. TRUMP”
The Atlantic, citing new polls, noted this month that Trump is “bleeding support among Black and Hispanic voters, and especially men.” Trump who won almost half of Hispanic voters in ’24, now heads a party that is polling at just 27% to 35% of Hispanic support for the midterms, The Atlantic wrote. Latino backing of Trump has sunk lower than that of non-Latino voters. Read more
Related: Tuning out Trump is the most constructive thing you can do now. By Robert Reich / AlterNet
Expert: David Crowley’s Primary Win Sets Up Historic Midterms for Black Democrats Across the US. By Phenix S. Halley / The Root
David Crowley’s win in Wisconsin puts Democrats closer to a historic chance to elect three Black governors in presidential battleground states this midterm season.
David Crowley is celebrating after winning Wisconsin’s Democratic primary. Now, he’s one step closer to becoming the state’s first Black governor – and potentially one of three Black Democrats to win governors’ races in presidential battleground states this fall. Read more
New Survey Shows Black Adults are in the Worst Financial Position in Nearly a Decade. By Angela Wilson / The Root
A new survey shows that under the Trump administration, Black adults’ financial well-being continues to deteriorate disproportionately.
While the White House takes a victory lap for a booming stock market that recently surged to a record high, everyday Americans face a far grimmer reality—one marked by deteriorating finances, rising job insecurity, and widespread layoffs that seem impossible to escape. And the proof is in the data. The numbers from a new Federal Reserve survey reveal a sharp and troubling shift in America’s economy under the Trump administration, which is disproportionately impacting Black adults. Read more
Civil rights groups warn ending EEOC workforce data could hide discrimination against Black workers. By Odafe Oghen / The Grio
Researchers and advocates say eliminating a 60-year-old reporting requirement would make it harder to identify racial disparities across American workplaces.
The concerns come after the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) moved last month to end its racial data collection rule, and amid broader changes to civil rights enforcement under President Donald Trump. The fight over EEOC workforce data now enters a public-comment period. Read more
The Inconvenient Scholarship of Kevin Roberts. By Samuel G. Freedman / LA RB
Samuel G. Freedman traces the long and contradictory intellectual journey of the man behind Project 2025.
The nearly 900-page to-do list for a second Trump presidency decries a “totalitarian cult known today as ‘The Great Awokening,’” as Roberts himself puts it in the introduction. In that same essay, he accuses the federal Department of Education of “inject[ing] racist, anti-American, ahistorical propaganda into America’s classrooms.” How can the Kevin Roberts who wrote with incision and sensitivity about the humanity of enslaved Black people be the same Kevin Roberts who, in the Project 2025 introduction, likened the United States’ ultimate rejection of slavery to his hoped-for rejection of “wokeism”? Read more
What Is Usha Vance Thinking? By Kate Andersen Brower / Vanity Fair
“It’s patronizing to say that she’s been silenced,” one Yale Law classmate says of JD Vance’s wife, who has perfected the art of knowing where she stands in the Trump administration’s political pecking order. “She has chosen this.”
It’s a posture she has perfected: present, useful, and almost invisible. If she is at all disturbed by the nativist Republican Party her husband has come to represent, she never shows it, at least not publicly. Like many ambitious spouses of powerful politicians, Usha has learned to operate in private—a quiet architect content to let her husband stand in the light while she does the load-bearing work off camera. Read more
Black people are being found hanging from trees. Why are officials so quick to call it suicide? By Haniyah P. / The Grio
Tasia Fortune’s death is the latest in a string of cases across the country, drawing scrutiny over how officials investigate Black deaths.
In recent weeks, Black communities have noticed a disturbing pattern of Black people dying in mysterious ways, and then local officials jumping to early conclusions about the causes of death. In addition to cases like Nolan Wells, Daniel Erving, and Tyler Smith, who were found dead near bodies of water, this year, a number of Black bodies have reportedly been found hanging from trees across the country. Read more
Education
Most States Have Acknowledged The Debt Owed to Public HBCUs. Almost None Have Paid It. By Walter Hudson / Eduledger
Four years ago, a landmark Forbes investigation put a number on something Black college leaders had argued for generations: their institutions had been systematically short-changed by the states that were legally obligated to fund them.
The figure — at least $12.8 billion in missed state and federal appropriations to the nation’s 18 public land-grant HBCUs between 1987 and 2020 — became a rallying cry from campus rallies in Tallahassee to congressional hearing rooms in Washington. Read more
Trump’s Latest Target in the DEI Crackdown? A Federal Website for Minority Scholarships. By Angela Wilson / The Root
In Trump’s latest move to crackdown on DEI, a federally funded career website that lists college scholarships for women and students of color will be revamped.
CareerOneStop, a federally funded career and education database, is designed to help women, students of color, and people with disabilities easily search for college scholarships. However, the site is now on the verge of a major overhaul in the Trump administration’s latest crackdown on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI). Read more
Related: DOJ Declares 3 Race-Based STEM Programs Unconstitutional. By Olivia Sanchez / Inside Higher Ed.
First HBCU AI institute building opened under seasoned leader. By Steven Gaither / HBCU Gameday
North Carolina Central University has opened what it says is the nation’s first dedicated artificial intelligence institute building at an HBCU, giving the Durham institution a physical home for research, education and workforce development in one of the fastest-growing areas of technology.
The Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Emerging Research officially opened its new facility on Aug. 10 at the corner of Fayetteville and Lawson streets. The roughly 5,000-square-foot building cost $7.2 million and was funded through a combination of federal Title III dollars and NCCU trust funds. Read more
Trump Administration Ends Louisiana Desegregation Consent Decree. By Joe Jurado / Newsone
Under President Donald Trump’s leadership, the Justice Department has framed most efforts to limit discrimination as federal overreach.
According to AP, the consent decree ordering desegregation at Bossier Parish Schools was originally issued in 1964. Bossier Parish Schools argued that the consent decree was a relic of a time when Black students were forbidden from attending schools. “Dismissal of the case allows us the freedom to make our own decisions that are in the best interest of all students, staff and our community, while keeping in mind the history of the past 61 years,” Bossier Schools Superintendent Jason Rowland said in a statement. Read more
World
Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: Mexico’s Third Root. By Luz Maria Martinez Montiel / Migrations in History
Although strongest in black enclaves like Costa Chica, the African presence pervades Mexican culture. In story and legend, music and dance, proverb and song, the legacy of Africa touches the life of every Mexican.
Still, it is difficult to single out any one influence as “purely” African. Certainly, the African presence in Mexico has never been monolithic. Although most slaves were brought from West Africa, they represented many ethnic groups (the Cafi, the Arara, the Carabali, the Wolof, and the Mandinga, to name a few), each with a different culture and world view. Today, after five hundred years of blending with the traditions of Indians and Europeans, it has become nearly impossible to trace the specific contributions of any of these groups. Read more
In Ohio, Haitians’ American dream shatters as Ice prepares to deport them. By Stephen Starr / The Guardian
US immigration has ramped up operations against Haitians, whose temporary protected status was removed by Trump
When Monsanto Maler walked out of an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) facility in Blue Ash, Ohio, at 9.15am on Sunday with an ankle monitor freshly attached to his left leg, he put his hand over his face, burst into tears and fell to the ground. He had come to the US in June 2023, fleeing gangs in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, where he had been hit over the right side of his head, leaving a large, visible scar. Read more
Related: ‘The streets are empty’: Haitians recede from public in South Florida as TPS ends. By
France’s Best Argument Against Racism Isn’t Working. By Thomas Chatterton Williams / The Atlantic
The country’s most beloved men are paragons of diversity, but ethnic resentment is still winning.
Last month, the French striker Kylian Mbappé recorded the 22nd goal of his World Cup career during the bronze-medal match, establishing himself, at the age of 27, as the greatest scorer in tournament history. Even though the French national team, Les Bleus, failed to win the championship, Mbappé has become one of the country’s two most celebrated figures. At the final the next day, the camera panned across the audience and easily found the other one: Victor Wembanyama, the 22-year-old, 7-foot-4 basketball player who is widely considered to be the future of the NBA. Their success points to a stark irony: France’s most beloved men reflect a demographic shift that a growing share of their country rejects. Read more
Ethics / Morality / Religion
Paxton, Talarico tap contrary versions of God and Christianity in appeal to Texas voters. By Ellie Ashby / RNS
In a state where two-thirds of the adult population identifies as Christian and 45% say religion is ‘very important’ in their life, the candidates are asking voters to choose between two dramatically different views of Christianity.
Talarico, believing God is on the side of the oppressed and the marginalized, focuses his message to voters on equity and protecting personal freedom. Paxton sees God as on his side — a force safeguarding his ability to protect Texas and the nation from disaster at the hands of the “radical left.” Read more
After Charlottesville, a historian asks: Did America miss the point? By Yonat Shimron / RNS
Antisemitism has been here before, argues James Loeffler, a historian of modern Jewish history, in a new book. But public understanding of it has not necessarily grown.
Loeffler, who is now a professor of Modern Jewish History at Johns Hopkins University, wondered about that omission and decided to research how Americans approached antisemitism during other pivotal moments. The result was his new book, “Exceptional Hatred: Antisemitism and the Fight over Free Speech in Modern America,” an examination of how the public and the courts have dealt with anti Jewish hate speech since the end of World War II. Read more
Not giving up: A group of social justice warriors sustains the resistance with community and meditation. By Yonat Shimron / RNS
For nearly a decade, activists with the group Democracy Out Loud have been protesting at the North Carolina General Assembly, holding vigils for people who died in government custody, writing letters to their state and federal representatives and building coalitions of like-minded activists.
They admit: They haven’t been successful in pushing back the tide of what they see as growing authoritarianism across the nation. But these battle-scarred social justice veterans, many with a long history of involvement in social and political causes stretching back decades, have been able to build one thing that has lasted: a growing community of people who care for each other and practice a form of spiritual grounding rooted in meditation. Read more
The Fatal Combination of Ideology and Charisma. By James Kirchick / The Atlantic
A 1978 massacre offers a warning for America today.
In January 1977, not two years before Reverend Jim Jones would orchestrate his followers’ deaths by the hundreds, a San Francisco church bestowed its Martin Luther King Jr. Humanitarian Award on him. Jones, the founder of the Peoples Temple of the Disciples of Christ, had managed to become a major player in the city’s politics. No one foresaw the horrific depths to which the combination of a charismatic leader, an all-encompassing belief system, and the human need for community and redemption would soon descend. Read more
Historical / Cultural
Bryan Stevenson on the “Enduring Evil of Slavery” and Trump’s Attempt to Rewrite History. By Amy Goodman / Democracy Now
We spend the hour with civil rights lawyer Bryan Stevenson, founder and executive director of the Equal Justice Initiative. In 2018, the organization opened the Legacy Museum in Montgomery, Alabama, to tell the history of millions of enslaved Africans who were abducted and trafficked across the Atlantic to the Americas by European powers, and to chronicle the legacy of slavery, racism, lynchings and segregation in the United States.
Stevenson details the Equal Justice Initiative’s goal of educating the public about racial iniquities, as well as his own family’s connection to slavery. “My foreparents did not come to this country seeking greater opportunity. They did not come seeking shelter from some distant threat. They came in chains. They were victims of a brutal abduction,” he says. Read more
Black Folks Built Wealthy Neighborhoods Across America—Where Are They Now? By Asheea Smith / The Root
We’re tracing the history of Black wealth, the communities that built it and the forces that reshaped—or displaced them. North Carolina Mutual Forum of Directors, 1929 (L-R) Edward R. Merrick, Martin A. Goins, John Avery, William D. Hill, William J. Kennedy, Jr. Charles C. Spaulding, Sr., Richard L. McDougald, George W. Cox, Dr. Clyde Donnell
From Black Wall Streets and affluent neighborhoods to thriving business districts, Black Americans built powerful networks where ownership, entrepreneurship and prosperity could flourish. But for many of these communities, that prosperity would come under threat as forces ranging from racial violence to displacement and urban renewal reshaped their futures. Read more
W.E.B. Du Bois Doc ‘Rebel With a Cause’ Isn’t History — It’s a Survival Guide for This Moment. By
At the Martha’s Vineyard African American Film Festival, the PBS “American Masters” documentary played less like history than instruction for Black America right now.
“Because he witnessed Reconstruction, its fall, the rolling back of the Black codes, two world wars, Brown v. Board — Du Bois is a portal,” said Emory University sociologist Dr. Karida Brown. “By understanding his life, we learn all of this on repeat. There’s a playbook, and we get to learn it so we don’t start from scratch.” Read more
Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche: The Story Of The Only Black Passenger Aboard The Titanic. By Shannon Dawson / Newsone
Joseph Laroche, the only known Black passenger aboard the ill-fated Titanic, had a remarkable story that defied the racial prejudices of his time.
When the RMS Titanic set sail in April 1912, among its passengers was a young Haitian engineer whose story would become one of the lesser-known chapters of the historic disaster. Joseph Philippe Lemercier Laroche was just 25 years old when he boarded the Titanic with his white French-born wife, Juliette, and their two young daughters, Simone and Louise. The family was traveling second class as they made their way back to Haiti, where Laroche hoped to build a better future for his family when tragedy struck. Read more
Blues ‘enthusiast’ Morgan Freeman’s album covers 100 years of the genre. By Maria Sherman / AP
It happened out of necessity. Academy Award-winner Morgan Freeman was in Clarksdale, Mississippi, 25 years ago when some out-of-towners asked where they could hear blues music. Musicians were abundant; venues were not. “There was no place where we could guarantee that you could go in and hear it,” he told The Associated Press. “So, we had to establish that.”
Freeman and his business partners, then-Mayor Bill Luckett and Howard Stovall, were inspired to open a juke joint in Clarksdale called Ground Zero Blues Club. Then, much more recently, they created “Morgan Freeman’s Symphonic Blues Experience,” a touring ensemble of blues musicians who marry the beloved Southern genre with classical, symphonic compositions. On Friday, they’ll release an album under the same name. Read more
Sports
Black golf’s pro participation and the problems it faces. By Michael Williams / Andscape
Zero. It isn’t a score. It isn’t a handicap. It isn’t the number of putts a player hopes to take from 6 feet. Instead, zero is the number of African American golfers who competed this year in the four men’s professional major golf championships.
Statistics can tell us what happened, but they rarely explain the why. To understand how golf arrived at this moment, you must rewind the story more than six decades to another time when “zero” carried a very different meaning. There was a time when the absence of Black golfers in professional tournaments wasn’t surprising. Rather, it was policy. Read more
Fred Richard coasts to first national title at US gymnastics championships. By Agencies / The Guardian
Frederick Richard won his first US men’s gymnastics all-around title Saturday night, flashing the form he believes can make him a contender at the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics.
The 22-year-old Richard, a key member of the men’s team that earned bronze at the Paris Games two summers ago, posted a two-day total of 170.015, two points clear of runner-up Shane Wiskus and three points ahead of promising newcomer Danila Leykin. Read more
The WNBA’s Uneven Whistle Continues To Put Black Women In Danger. By Nicky Childers / Newsone
In just one game, the WNBA protected white players while leaving Black players and refs exposed to a growing threat it keeps ignoring.
This piece was supposed to be about Indiana Fever guard Caitlin Clark’s suspension after being called for her eighth technical foul during the third quarter of the Fever’s matchup against the Chicago Sky on Saturday. Before we could get the news written and published, the WNBA had rescinded the technical and the suspension intended to accompany it. Read more
Tuskegee University Brings HBCU Culture to the Pitch in New Soccer Docuseries. By Rashad Grove / The Root
Executive produced by Brian Egeston and directed by Byron Horne, ‘Unveiling History’ captures the Golden Tigers’ inaugural NCAA Men’s and Women’s soccer teams.
HBCUs are known for their storied traditions in sports such as football and basketball. But this upcoming season, Tuskegee University, one of the most prestigious HBCUs, will be making major waves in the NCAA with two new teams. Read more
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